More Space used up on Backup drive than meets the eye

[Avinexis]

Hey guys, I was always a little bit puzzled at the amount of free space I have left over in my backup drive ever since I did an iPod recovery to get all my music and the metadata back.

 

I had about 250Gb free for other stuff out of "465"Gb, but now I only have 150. While recovering my music I copied music from my iPod to this drive, deleted it again, copied it back again, messed around with iTunes, deleted it again, and then I recovered directly from the iPod into my iTunes folder, which I left on my backup drive.

 

Since then I've lost about 100Gb. I checked the properties of each folder and added up the space each one used, and it only came to 260Gb, yet my drive reports that 316Gb is being used up, out of a total 465. I've tried looking for hidden files and folders, protected system files, etc. Any clues? :S

[I7T7S]

Try Disk Cleanup -> More Options -> System Restore and Shadow Copies -> Press Cleanup button.

[Avinexis]

Try Disk Cleanup -> More Options -> System Restore and Shadow Copies -> Press Cleanup button.

System Volume Information read at an insignificant size and System Protection lists the backup drives status as being turnedoff, but nevertheless I shall give it a go.

 

Edit: Nah, no change here. This has me stumped. I was thinking of pulling all of the folders I need and formatting the drive. Otherwise I really don't know what's going on here

Edited April 20, 2010 by Danrik

[RogerDeath]

I had a similar problem with my Zune, and the only solution for it was a bad hard drive. Not only was this thing loud, it "wrote" 100+ GB of information while I slept and it was off. Try fragging the whole thing and if that doesn't help, well looks like its time for a RMA on your end buddy. Just like that poor Zune....

[ebarone]

Do you have any Norton/Symantec system tools installed on your computer?

[airman]

Try using a program called "SequoiaView". It indexes your entire hard drive (takes a little while to scan) and shows you graphically what's there, and groups it into the folders. Kinda hard to explain, but here's a screenshot:

 

 

Each of the main blocks are folders/files on the root of the drive, and smaller blocks are the folders inside of them. The individual rectangles are the files themselves. If you hold your mouse over each block/file it shows you how much space it's taking up and its location. If you can't find anything wrong or find the problem, try updating the firmware on the drive if you feel adventurous...

Edited April 20, 2010 by airman

[d3bruts1d]

While recovering my music I copied music from my iPod to this drive, deleted it again, copied it back again, messed around with iTunes, deleted it again, and then I recovered directly from the iPod into my iTunes folder, which I left on my backup drive.

 

Since then I've lost about 100Gb. I checked the properties of each folder and added up the space each one used, and it only came to 260Gb, yet my drive reports that 316Gb is being used up, out of a total 465. I've tried looking for hidden files and folders, protected system files, etc. Any clues? :S

You have 3 copies of every song on your hard drive now. Two copies are in the recycle bin and one copy in the iTunes folder. Empty your trash.

[supergeek101]

You have 3 copies of every song on your hard drive now. Two copies are in the recycle bin and one copy in the iTunes folder. Empty your trash.

 

I actually cleaned out 100GB of unknown usage from my hard drive by unhiding the system files, and literally deleting the recycle bin folder (permanant erase). I also deleted the Volume System Information information folder. Although recycle bin may show empty, there were still a lot of things in there that I didn't know about. Disk cleanup didn't remove it, I had to do it manually.

[ebarone]

Thats why I asked about the Norton software... I used to have Norton System Tools and emptying my recycle bin wasnt enough to delete files and free up HDD space. I had to click some other option, cant remember its name at the moment, and THEN the files would be truely deleted. It was software designed to recover accidentally deleted files... it was very annoying.

[Avinexis]

Cheers for the thoughts guys! It's pretty weird, but I got it all fixed...

 

So first of all I tried a DskChk and it came up with a couple bad eggs, so they were cleaned up.

 

I then copied every file from the backup drive onto a different drive and tried to format the drive through the OS, which didn't work at all.

 

I then formatted the backup drive through the Windows 7 installer upon booting up the PC. No issues, until I restarted...

 

I was met with the error "BOOTMGR IS MISSING. Ctrl + Alt + Delete to restart."

 

I looked up the issue and booted up the 7 installer again, going to the repair section of the installer and chose command prompt, and entered /bootrec fixboot, and as an extra measure I ran the recovery function too.

 

Now everything is right as rain and my backup drive is to its old self.

 

So YEAH! That's some real bad juju going on there =S I can't explain it. Oh well